Weddingbee Blog

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Um, why hasn’t anyone told me how difficult and time-consuming reserving a block of rooms for a wedding can be? Somebody has really dropped the ball on keeping Miss Lab in the loop!

I’ve been trying for a couple weeks now to get a hold of someone at a few hotels I’m interested in, but haven’t had much luck. Either I call too late (this internship is killing all my free “business hours” time) or when I get a chance to call within operating hours, their sales teams are out for the day! I’ve tried leaving voice messages and emails, but no one is getting back to me. ARGH.

I was always under the assumption that hotel blocking would be one of the easier things to do in the wedding planning process.
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As part of my “must-do list” @$$-kicking week, we’re putting the deposit down on our guest transportation:

A trolley! Our ceremony will take place at a square smack dab in the middle of historic downtown Savannah where it’s hard to find parking and easy to get lost. So we decided it would benefit everyone involved to just park at our reception site…
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Since our wedding’s going to take place about 45 minutes from Grand Forks, Mr. Mary Jane suggested it might be fun to hire a limo to bring us and all of our guests there and back.

I was thinking, ‘OK, I guess I would be alright with going a little over budget to spend a couple hundred dollars on this…’

A couple hundred? Hah!

We’d need at least three hours, I figure. I found out that for this vehicle, which seats 14…:

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Several weeks ago, Mr. Bruschetta and I had one of the biggest fights of our relationship. The culprit? Our wedding day transportation. Let me explain a bit more…

Throughout our engagement, the mister and I have shared ideas and talked things out to determine each other’s preferences. Often, one of us feels strongly about something, while the other is more lackadaisical. But we always factor in one another’s feelings — and since our tastes and vision so frequently coincide, decision-making is a breeze, and both of us are usually quite content as we check things off the to-do list.
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I have to admit, I’m not a wedding veteran. I’ve only been to a few, and the last one was over five years ago. But, if were going to a destination wedding as a guest, I’m guessing I would like it if the bride and groom gave me some recommendations on activities to do in the area. Our wedding, although not in Mexico or the Caribbean, happens to be a destination wedding for about 95% of our guests (including ourselves). And, while we don’t know the area extremely well, there are a few things we can recommend.

My favorite thing that we’re hoping our guests will do? Take a couple of extra hours and drive through Rocky Mountain National Park. From the airport, our venue happens to be in the middle of a big loop. Guests can either drive to and from the airport on the same two-hour windy mountain pass (also beautiful) or they can drive the two-hour road in and take the three-and-a-half hour long way out (or vice versa) through the park. Here’s what the most direct, two-hour route looks like on a map:

Here’s what that drive (through Berthoud Pass) looks like in person:

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Having a kick-ass Out of Town Bag for our guests was high priority on our list. I mean, our awesome friends and family were traveling all the way to Jamaica to celebrate us, so the least we could do was try to thank them with a few goodies!

Letter and agenda for our guests, rum, waterproof camera, coffee, DIY CD, sunscreen and mosquito wipes!

One of our first tasks upon arriving in Jamaica was buying two local items: a bottle of Appleton Estate Rum & Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee. We had our driver take us to a slightly shady grocery store/bar/I don’t know what, where we ended up bargaining down the price of the rum about 30%! Score!
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Remember when we peeked inside the upstairs bathroom at the F.U.E.L. House? I’d been puzzling over what type of container to use for our bathroom “baskets”. And, suddenly, when I wasn’t even looking for it, the perfect option was right in front of me.

Several weekends back, Mr. Bruschetta and I were running through a list of errands, and popped into Harry & David to use an about-to-expire coupon. I spotted some cute bowls and picked one up, thinking they’d be perfect for entertaining — just the right size to fill with snacks. And then, the bowl caught a stream of sunlight flooding into the store, and I noticed the hint of blue running along its rim. Could this cool-shaped bowl work for our bathroom baskets?

I was hesitating — is it too small? is using a bowl too bizarre? — when I noticed the clearance sign. A quick check of the return policy — no time limit, provided you have the receipt — and I snapped up four bowls for a total of $6.79.

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Honestly, a honeymoon suite was the last thing on my priority list. I really hadn’t thought about it at all until someone at our venue asked where we would be staying after the wedding. Staying? Um… at our house? I mean, we live together, and what better place to sleep the night after our wedding than in our own bed, right?

Of course, living together offers up other obstacles. Specifically, who gets to stay at home the night before the wedding. We aren’t supposed to see each other, right? So, someone has to get out.

Fortunately, Crabby Daddy came to the rescue and got me a suite at the hotel all my guests are staying in for the night before the wedding. We opted for a double queen suite, so that a few of my bridesmaids can stay with me.

There were talks of extending the reservation for Saturday night as well. It would be convenient, since I could leave all my stuff there and not have to worry about actually “checking out” before the wedding. But, we really wanted a little more privacy than a suite in the same hotel as all of our guests.

We went back to considering just coming home.
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I know as I have been planning our wedding, I’ve been thinking of some ideas that will make traveling for our guests easier. I made a map to help guests find the ceremony venue, and then I thought, well, I can also include a map to get to the reception, as well as to the church. Then, as I was driving the interstate into the city one Saturday, it hit me… TRAFFIC!

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I totally forgot that the interstate is having some construction done, thus the reason for the traffic. It took me almost 45 minutes for me to get from Point A to Point B, which usually takes me 20 minutes. I immediately thought of our wedding. It was about the same time of day as the wedding will take place, and I really didn’t want our guests to have to deal with traffic, especially the out of towners, who do not know some alternate routes to take to get there.
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I had always seen myself as a vintage limo type of bride. I could see Mr. S and me running off to an elegant classic car while our family and friends cheered us on in my dream… an outrageously expensive dream, that is.

Source: Wedding Guide Chicago

Classic limos don’t come cheap by any means. And I scoured the internet for every single company in the Chicago area that might have classic limos, hoping for the perfect car at a bargain basement price. Let me tell you - the amount of limo companies out there is astounding and overwhelming. I searched over a few months with mounting frustration (and yes, I definitely put the cart before the, err, limo and was working on this side project before my florist, baker, and dress had even been found).

I understand why I was finding such high prices - I can assume that the cost of maintaining these cards warrants the high hourly rate. But spending $700, $800, even $900 on a car (and then gratuity!) was not in the cards for us.
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Room #2.

That’s where I’ll spend the last night I’m a Miss and the first night I’m a MRS!

We decided on the Blair Hill Inn for a few reasons. Number one, it’s one of the best luxury inns in the state, and the owners are said to be as charming as the estate they so lovingly care for. Number two, it’s super close to our ceremony/reception site. Number three, we are doing most of our formal pictures prior to the ceremony (since I don’t want all our pics to be on the boat), and they have allowed us to take some pictures on their grounds (which are GORGEOUS!). We looked into having the actual wedding here, but at $200+ per person, and rental of all the rooms for the whole weekend, it was WAY out of our budget.

Check out the main house: (all images from here)

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That’s right, our wedding is one month away. I don’t even know where the time has gone! Luckily, things in the Quiche wedding planning household have been smooth sailing!

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I have one of those daily desktop calendars at work, and it contains a French phrase for the day. Looking ahead and hoping to find one about love on or around our wedding day, I came across this phrase for May 1st: “J’ai perdu mon passeport”, which translates to, “I lost my passport”. And for the day we’re flying out, the phrase is: “Je n’ai qu’un sac de cabine”, or, “I only have carry-on luggage”.
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So Mr. Joey and I went back and forth about a wedding website for a long time. While we liked having a central place for travel suggestions and wedding information, he was not too excited to have his information in a searchable place.

Mr. Joey has some devoted but nosey students. It’s the reason he doesn’t have a Facebook or MySpace account, and the reason he’ll never tell them my last name (it’s pretty unique). He’s OK with a blog where his name wouldn’t be in searchable text, but he’s not OK with a website designed to give out info about us and our relationship that his students could find.

Yes, it seems a little crazy, until you have 3 students show up at your apartment one Sunday afternoon. Yes, it really happened. He teaches at a small private school, so keeping info from the kids can be hard. We’ve even had a few kids threaten to crash the wedding. Luckily, it’s in the summer when no kid wants to be at school (the ceremony is at the school chapel) and few other teachers who are invited have sworn themselves to secrecy.

So what to do about sharing info? Local guests are easy. They don’t need travel info, and essentially everything they need to know is on the invitations. Out-of-town guests need travel info and suggestions for visiting the city. What to do?

Well, I came up with an idea I stole from the back of Blueprint Magazine (R.I.P.).
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Mr. Ballet Flat and I will be honeymooning in Orlando. For the majority of the honeymoon, we decided to stay in a vacation home.

Since we are road tripping it to Orlando, which is a good 8-9 hours away from New Orleans, we definitely want to rest up the night of our wedding so we can hit the road well-rested the next morning. We were originally looking at hotels in Biloxi, Mississippi, because it’s not too far from New Orleans at all and would shave an hour or so off the travel time for us the next day. Plus, their casino hotels, for the most part, are pretty nice. The problem? These hotels wanted upwards of $400/night, and that’s a little over budget for us.

So, we decided to try Priceline to bid on a nice 4 star hotel. We have used Priceline for mini vacations that we have taken before and have been really satisfied with the hotels.

Priceline is really easy to use. You just name your city and date, then click on the type of hotel you want (1,2,3,4 star), choose the area of the city you want to stay in, name your price, and let Priceline do the work. The only risk is you are obligating yourself to whatever hotel takes your bid, so it can be a shot in the dark. However, if you choose a higher star hotel, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, since those are known as nicer hotels.
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One of the very few wedding-related tasks that I completely delegated to Mr. Latte was researching and reserving blocks of hotel rooms. I made up some lame excuse about why he should take care of it… something about how his friends were the ones that would need the hotel block, and since he knows them better than I do, he should be the one to do it. I know, super lame… but it worked!

In reality, I did not want to have anything to do with this aspect of wedding planning. I had heard horror stories from friends about hotels not honoring discounted rates, high minimums and unrelenting customer service representatives. I just didn’t want to deal with it! And to be honest, I just can’t get that excited about a hotel. I am not a fan of sleeping in strange beds, in strange rooms and hearing strange noises at night. This is unfortunate because I travel a lot for work. Sure, I’ve stayed in some really nice hotels, but it just takes a lot for me to get excited about a hotel stay.

But when you can say “bunk bed,” “hammock,” and “sunken bed,” all in 1 sentence, how can you be anything but excited? Yup, these can all be found at the NU Hotel in Brooklyn. A new boutique hotel (opened in July ’08), this hotel boasts fresh designs that looked so cool online that I had to go see it in person. I immediately loved the trendy feel of the lobby, and the clean look of the rooms. Check out these pictures from their website:

(NU’s lobby)

Their standard rooms are nice, but check out these suites:
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